from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If you look closely enough at nearly anything, you're bound to find some fascinating details. With the right tools, you can see single-celled organisms are literally everywhere (and viruses are even more ubiquitous). The biodiversity of soil is obviously important to farmers, but there are other interesting things we can find out when we quantify the dirt under our feet. If you've ever wondered what's in dirt, check out these links on soil.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People eat a lot of weird things: bugs, fungus, all kinds of fermented stuff. However, the craving for dirt is a real phenomenon, and people do actually eat various kinds of dirt. There's some evidence that our ancient ancestors -- 2 million years ago -- (aka homo habilis) ate dirt. Dirt is even sold for eating in the USA right now. If you'd like to learn more about eating dirt, here you go.

from the that's-not-right dept

We've written a few times about former Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader/former school teacher Sarah Jones' ridiculous lawsuit against TheDirty.com, because one of its users had posted some claims that were potentially defamatory towards her. The case has been something of a mess. As we noted a few years ago, she sued the wrong company, filing the actual lawsuit against the company which runs TheDirt.com (not TheDirty.com). Eventually that got sorted out, and what should have been a straight quick dismissal because of Section 230 of the CDA (which says a site is not liable for statements made by users) was muddled because a judge didn't seem to like the website. The judge flat out claims that if a site has "dirt" in its name, it may not be subject to Section 230 protections. And that's kinda scary for those of us here at Techdirt.

First, the name of the site in and of itself encourages the posting only of “dirt,” that is material which is potentially defamatory or an invasion of the subject’s privacy.

Of course, having allowed the case to move forward and flat out contradicted pretty much every ruling on Section 230 to date, the jury has now said the site needs to pay $338,000. The lawyer for TheDirty.com is actually happy about this, because he can finally get the case out of that judge's court and bring it to an appeals court which might actually understand Section 230.

“I’m happy,” says David Gingras, lawyer for the TheDirty.com. “We have spent three and a half years litigating against a federal judge who thinks the Internet is an Atari video game. To have an adverse judgment is never a good thing, but it’s good for us to get out of that court.”

Of course, Kash Hill, at Forbes, also points out that Jones -- who claims her reputation was harmed by the claims on TheDirty.com -- seems to have done some damage to her own reputation, well beyond just suing the wrong site:

The three and a half years since the case was filed have been drama-filled. Jones originally sued the wrong site. She then amended her complaint to sue the right site, but had to take time off for her own criminal suit after she was charged with having sex with a minor. Her first trial against The Dirty ended in a hung jury. Meanwhile, she got engaged to the minor, a former student of hers. Needless to say, she is no longer teaching. Richie was happy to point out on his blog (repeatedly) that Jones ruined her own reputation in the years after his site published a warning about her.

Hopefully, we won't get sued for reposting that comment. After all, we are a website with "dirt" in the domain name.

from the hey,-wait-a-second... dept

Back in 2010, we wrote about an attempt to sue the website TheDirty.com for libel... in which the lawyer for the site accidentally sued a different site, called TheDirt.com. This resulted in some hilarity with a bogus default judgment and plenty of confusion. We joked how, given the similarities in the names of those sites to Techdirt, perhaps we should be happy that we weren't sued as well. However, once all the mistakes were realized, the case did shift to actually suing TheDirty.com's owner. TheDirty is (1) not safe for work and (2) not a particularly nice site. It mostly involves user submissions of pictures of women, along with generally mean commentary from the user -- and then maybe a short comment from the site's owner. It is a mean site, and the site's owner and readers seem to embrace that, even if it's exceptionally petty.

The specific lawsuit involved a Bengals cheerleader/school teacher, who wasn't happy with the pictures of her posted to the website... along with the comments made about her (such as suggesting she had slept with the entire football team). As we noted at the time, if this content is user generated -- it's a clear situation where the case should be dismissed over Section 230's safe harbors (which put the liability on the actual content creator, rather than the middlemen third parties). In this case, the actions that might reach the level of defamation clearly came from the user, not the site owner. Previous rulings in other districts have even made it clear that sites that merely pass along content created by someone else -- even if it involves a moderator "choosing" what gets displayed -- do not lose the basic protections. So this case should have been a slam dunk.

Instead... it appears that the judge has gone in the other direction, creating really convoluted arguments to claim that Section 230 does not apply. As Eric Goldman explains, there are serious problems with this ruling:

The court's discussion is short, yet it's surprisingly scattered. Pages 8-10 run through a gamut of gripes about thedirty's practices and statements, but the judge doesn't articulate the relevance of these facts (other than providing evidence of the judge's animus towards thedirty). Because the judge does a poor job connecting the facts to his adopted legal standard, we aren't sure exactly what thedirty did to foreclose the 230 immunity

The ruling, which is attached below, really is that bizarre. The judge twists and turns himself into contortions to try to come up with a reason to say that TheDirty.com is liable for comments made on the site. The simplest explanation, as Eric noted, is that the judge just didn't like the kind of site that TheDirty.com is (and from a quick glance, remains). The key to the judge's ruling is in trying to apply the infamous Roomates.com case. The problem, however, is that the case doesn't fit well. Roommates.com lost not because the site encouraged some actions against the law, but because its menu choices were a part of the content creation, and those menu choices, themselves, directly violated the Fair Housing Act.

It's a huge stretch to go from there to claiming that a site where mean things are celebrated is no longer protected via Section 230's safe harbors. But that's what the judge did.

And, in part, it gets really scary for me, personally, because the judge declares -- multiple times -- that the use of the word "dirt" in a domain name means that you are encouraging defamation:

First, the name of the site in and of itself encourages the posting only of “dirt,” that is material which is potentially defamatory or an invasion of the
subject’s privacy.

Of course, there's absolutely nothing in Section 230 that suggests that if a judge doesn't like your name -- or falsely assumes that any website with the word "dirt" in the name is up to no good -- he can ignore Section 230's important protections. Like Eric suggested, it would be good if there's an appeal here, because it seems to go against pretty much any other Section 230 ruling. Not liking a site is simply not a reason to ignore those important safe harbors...

And, just to summarize, here are the basics. The site, TheDirty.com posted a user submission, with a one-sentence comment on it. That submission included a cheerleader/teacher, who didn't like her photos being widely available. Somewhere along the way the legal shenanigans began. Remember, the contents of the post itself may be defamatory -- but that, alone, should not make the site liable. It could very well make the original submitter liable, but the cheerleader doesn't seem to want to go that route of actually suing those who did the bad thing. So, instead, the site now faces a lot of liability... because a judge thinks that having "dirt" in your domain name must mean that you're seeking out something bad.

For reasons beyond just the standard defenses of Section 230, this is pretty bizarre and slightly terrifying. I certainly don't encourage the submission of defamatory information. But because I have "dirt" in my domain name, does that mean I should be worried too?